On the evening of Oct 1, Victoria Harbour will once again become the stage for a spectacle that only the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region can produce. Some 31,888 pyrotechnic shells will rise from nine firing points along an 800-meter stretch of water, a 23-minute display titled “Eternal Radiance: Fireworks in Bloom, Illuminating Our Country”. It is a familiar ritual. Yet this year, the 77th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the celebration carries a weight that goes beyond spectacle.
The city has thrown open its doors for the occasion. The MTR Corp is giving away 77,000 free rides. Trams, the Star Ferry and several Fortune Ferry routes will cost nothing for the day. Children will ride most daytime franchised buses free of charge. Every commercial cinema in Hong Kong will sell tickets at half price; museums and the Wetland Park will waive admission charges; and the public enclosures at Sha Tin and Happy Valley racecourses will be open to all for the National Day race day. These are not trivial gestures. They reflect that the SAR government understands celebration should be shared by everyone, from residents to arriving visitors.
And arrive they will, in extraordinary numbers. The Immigration Department expects around 7.44 million passengers to pass through Hong Kong’s sea, land and air control points during the Golden Week from Oct 1 to 7. Roughly 1.29 million visitors from the Chinese mainland are expected over the holiday, with daily arrivals forecast to exceed last year’s by more than 5 percent. Hotel occupancy in popular districts is projected to top 90 percent.
The momentum was already visible over the Mid-Autumn Festival weekend, when mainland visitors made nearly 440,000 trips to Hong Kong in just three days, roughly a quarter of the 1.73 million inbound trips recorded. Because the Mid-Autumn Festival fell so close to Golden Week this year, many mainland travelers were able to stitch together a 13-day break by taking three days’ leave. Hong Kong, sitting at the doorstep of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, is the natural beneficiary.
What makes these figures worth mulling is not only their size but the infrastructure that makes them possible. Some 800 e-channels now operate at the city’s control points. At the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, enrolled residents can clear departure “on the move” through facial recognition, without so much as producing an identity card. Frequent visitors can enroll for e-channel service on their phones through the “Go Hong Kong” app before they even set foot in the city. A joint command center at Lo Wu will coordinate immigration, police, customs and the MTR. This is the machinery of a city that has learnt to handle scale with grace.
It’s worth remembering how far we have traveled. Barely seven years ago, Hong Kong was convulsed by unrest that emptied hotels and shuttered shops. The subsequent COVID-19 pandemic brought visitor arrivals down to a mere 1,800 in March 2022, a figure unthinkable for a city that once welcomed 65 million visitors a year. Many said that Hong Kong was “over”, and that the harbor would fall quiet for good.
How wrong they were. Real GDP grew 3.5 percent in 2025, accelerating from 2.6 percent the year before. Visitor arrivals reached 49.9 million last year, and in the first quarter of 2026 they jumped a further 17 percent to 14.3 million. Merchandise exports surged nearly 30 percent in the first two months of this year, buoyed by the global investment boom in artificial intelligence. Travel and tourism now account for 13.6 percent of GDP and support 587,000 jobs. Notably, arrivals from the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand have surpassed their 2018 levels, a sign that Hong Kong is increasingly the connector between the mainland and the Global South rather than merely a shopping destination for one market.
This recovery did not happen by accident. It took place because stability was restored, and because Hong Kong chose to align with the nation’s trajectory. The national 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30), launched in March, sets out a China that is more technologically self-reliant, more diversified in its industries and more open to the world. A supersized consumer market, a formidable innovation ecosystem and a pace of development that few places on Earth can match. These are the opportunities on Hong Kong’s doorstep. The question was never whether to seize them, but how quickly.
That is why Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu’s decision to unveil Hong Kong’s first five-year plan alongside his 2026 Policy Address on Sept 16 represents a genuine turning point. Critics who reflexively conjure images of a planned economy misunderstand the exercise entirely. As Lee patiently explained, the mainland itself moved decades ago from jihua, a planned output, to guihua, a planning process. The plan does not dictate how many bottles a factory must produce; it asks that the population be adequately supplied and leaves the market to decide the size, shape and brand. Hong Kong’s capitalism, its common law, its currency and its free flow of people, capital, data and goods are all preserved. The plan simply gives investors what they crave most: certainty about where the city is heading.
The substance is concrete. Tourism value-added is to rise 40 to 50 percent to HK$126 billion ($16.06 billion) by 2030. Some 196,000 public flats will be delivered over five years, cutting waiting times to under four years, and substandard subdivided units will be eliminated by 2030. Thirty thousand new jobs and apprenticeships will help young people take their first step into the workforce, while more than 40,000 workers will be trained in AI tools. The Northern Metropolis has been elevated from a land and housing project into an engine of education, industry and technology, complete with three university towns.
So when the fireworks fade out over the harbor this Oct 1, what will remain is a city with a blueprint and a nation with a direction. Hong Kong is the only place on Earth where local, national and international opportunities converge within 1,100 square km. Seventy-seven years after the founding of the People’s Republic, and after a decade that tested this city as few others have been tested, that convergence is no longer a slogan. It is a plan, and it is already being implemented.
The author is the convenor at China Retold, a member of the Legislative Council, and a member of the Central Committee of the New People’s Party.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
